The Bioresource Processing Alliance (BPA) is a public good research and development programme that is funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) to support opportunities to add value to by-products generated in the primary processing sector, with the objectives to increase productivity, generate export revenue, and create environmental and social benefits for New Zealanders.
The BPA programme is delivered through an alliance of four New Zealand Research Partners: Scion, Plant & Food Research, AgResearch and Callaghan Innovation. By leveraging specialist skills and capabilities from across these research organisations and others in the innovation ecosystem, the BPA is able to take on a range of projects to investigate opportunities to transform low value by-products from primary industry into higher value products. Projects span a range of commercialisation stages from early stage opportunity assessment and proof-of-concept projects, to scale up from lab-based to larger scale prototyping and demonstration.
The BPA Research Partners work closely with New Zealand industry organisations and companies to evaluate bioresource processing opportunities and to undertake research and development projects. Interests can vary. An organisation or company may be the owner of a by-product resource, a processor that could transform the resource, or a business that wants to transform the resource and has channels to market to commercialise value-added products. Organisations and companies participate in BPA projects by providing relevant information, materials, and services (in-kind contributions) and by providing co-funding to support the project alongside the BPA’s funding.
In each BPA project, the BPA Partner leading the project has responsibility to manage Intellectual Property (IP) arising from the R&D in a way that meets the programme’s objective to maximise benefits to New Zealand. In some cases, this means making research results available to others, so that relevant groups can understand opportunities and build on the learning. In other cases, this may mean providing a company (or companies) interested in commercialisation with the first opportunity to commercialise IP that arises from a project. In each case the approach is tailored to account for the stage of commercialisation, the company contribution and aspirations, and the BPA’s goal to incentivise commercialisation and ensure that research outcomes will be leveraged to create value for New Zealand.
The commercialisation strategy and IP management approach for each BPA project will be tailored to:
- recognise the BPA’s objective to maximise benefits (economic, environmental, and social) to New Zealand from IP arising from projects.
- efficiently de-risk new opportunities and build confidence in market, technical and economic feasibility to enable promising technology to go forward.
- recognise the interests of organisations contributing to a BPA project. This may be an interest to better understand options to add value to a by-product of processing; or may relate to the company’s interest to build its competitive position through the development of IP.
- make IP available to companies committed to the scale-up and commercialisation of new technology, alongside providing mechanisms for IP from BPA projects to be used if a company’s commercialisation activity ceases.
- consider Treaty of Waitangi and reflect Māori values.
- where appropriate, promote knowledge from BPA projects to be shared across BPA Partners and through publications, in alignment with commercialisation objectives.
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